Léna Soler & H. Sankey 
Rethinking Scientific Change and Theory Comparison: 
Stabilities, Ruptures, Incommensurabilities?

LÉNA SOLER This volume is a collection of essays devoted to the analysis of scientific change and stability. It represents the most recent thinking on the topic of incommensurability and scientific theory change. It explores the balance and tension that exists between commensurability and continuity (or stabilities) on the one hand, and incommen- rability and discontinuity (or ruptures) on the other. And it discusses some central epistemological consequences regarding the nature of scientific progress, rationality and realism. With respect to these topics, it investigates a number of new avenues and revisits some familiar issues, with a focus on the history and philosophy of physics, in a way that is informed by developments in cognitive sciences as well as the claims of “New experimentalists”. The essays in this book are fully revised versions of papers which were ori- nally presented at the international colloquium, “Repenser l’évaluation comparative des théories scientifiques: stabilités, ruptures, incommensurabilités?” organized by Léna Soler and Paul Hoyningen-Huene at the University of Nancy, France, in June 2004. Each paper is followed by a critical comment, which either represents an opposing viewpoint or suggests some developments. The conference was a striking example of the sort of genuine dialogue that can take place between philosophers of science, historians of science and scientists who come from different traditions and endorse opposing commitments. I hope that this is evident in the book too and that it will constitute one of its attractions.

Table of Content

Incommensurability, As Differences in Quasi-Intuitive Cognitive Capacities: A Task for Psychology?.- Incommensurability Naturalized.- Commentary on Bird’s Paper.- Incommensurability in a Wittgensteinian Perspective: How to Make Sense of Nonsense.- Nonsense and Paradigm Change.- Commentary on “Nonsense and Paradigm Change”, by Aristides Baltas.- Intra-Theoretical Change, as a Subjective Creative Elucidation of an Objective Formerly Present Content.- From One Version to the Other: Intra-Theoretical Change.- Commentary on “From One Version to the Other: Intra-Theoretical Change”, by Anouk Barberousse.- Investigating the Continuities of Scientific Theorizing: A Task for the Bayesian?.- Modeling High-Temperature Superconductivity: Correspondence at Bay?.- An Instrumental Bayesianism Meets the History of Science.- From the Cumulativity of Physical Predictions to the Cumulativity of Physics.- Is Science Cumulative? a Physicist Viewpoint.- Commentary on “is Science Cumulative? a Physicist Viewpoint”, by Bernard d’Espagnat.- From Denotational Continuity to Entity Realism.- The Optimistic Meta-Induction and Ontological Continuity: the Case of the Electron.- Some Optimism for the Pessimist.- Is a Realist Interpretation of Quantum Physics Possible?.- Can We Consider Quantum Mechanics to Be a Description of Reality?.- Commentary on “Can We Consider Quantum Mechanics to Be a Description of Reality?”, by Herve Zwirn.- Ontological Continuity: A Policy for Model Building or an Argument in Favour of Scientific Realism?.- Reasons for Choosing Among Readings of Equipollent Theories.- Harré Needs No Realism.- A Change of Perspective: Dissolving the Incommensurability Problem in the Framework of a Theoretical Pluralism Incorporating an Instrumental Rationality.- Of Course Idealizations Are Incommensurable!.- Incommensurability from a Modelling Perspective.- What Can Philosophical Theories of Scientific Method Do?.- The Aim And Structure Of Methodological Theory.- Method and Objectivity.-A New Kind of Incommensurability at the Level of Experimental Practices?.- The Incommensurability of Experimental Practices: An Incommensurability of What? An Incommensurability of A Third Type?.- Some Reflections on Experimental Incommensurability.- Pragmatic Breakdowns: A New Kind of Scientific Revolution?.- Disruptive Scientific Change.- Scientific Revolutions: the View from Inside and the View from Outside.